Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Carr invokes the clock as a form of technology that altered human consciousness. In his perspective, the systematization of time into the scientifically-ordered increments of the clock caused humans to conceptualize time as an objective reality, and not something dependent upon and shaped by human activity. The clock divorced the passage of time from the passage of human activity because it structured the idea of time as something dictated by the scientific and objective ticking of the clock’s hands. This is a powerful illustration of the impact on human technology that renders the artificiality of such technologies highly visible. Through this symbol, Carr invites his reader to analogously consider the impact of the Internet as an artificial technology. Instead of taking it for granted as an instrument that delivers reality to us, Carr asks us to understand it as a technology that shapes human reality.

The printing press functions as a symbol in a similar way to the clock. However, Carr’s invocation of the printing press is a bit more sustained and recurring. Through it, he parses another key aspect of the Internet as a technology. The symbol of the printing press invites the reader to examine how the medium that we encounter written texts shapes the way those texts are understood, processed, and interacted with.